The Gorgeous Chore

five poems

---

October Morning


This morning, I woke
to the sizzle and scent
of my father frying
potatoes and Spam.
But he's been dead

for twenty years.
So I rose from bed,
made my own eggs
and toast, and teased
my father's ghost

for always pouring
too much sugar
in his coffee
and too much salt
on his food. I get

lonesome
for my father but,
on mornings like these,
that lonesomeness 
feels like quiet joy.

---

The Long Day, The Long Night

At sundown
and sunrise,

my shadow is
taller than me.

None of us
is who

we believe
ourselves to be.

---

The Reservation Broadcasting System


That was the summer
a broken television

served as the stand
for a smaller television

that worked.

---

The Gorgeous Chore


Doing laundry, we'd find
certain stones in our
children's pockets.

How did they choose
which stones to keep?
We don't know.

But we'd create
a Little Museum
of Childhood

by placing those stones
on our shelves 
and sills. Twenty years

later, our sons are now
young men
but those stones

remain on display—
adored and still.

---

Warrior Song

We were the Indian girls
and boys who sometimes 
found arrowheads 

in the reservation dirt.
We never searched
for them. They just made

themselves known.
We'd cradle them
in our palms and argue

about which one of us
was directly descended 
from the carver

and hunter. Then
we'd return
the arrowheads 

to the silt and clay
and resume
our daily play.